Rock's Back Pages with Photographer Ken Regan

Bob Dylan in Montreal, fall 1975

"In that period of time, I took 13,750 photographs. Every night, Bob and I after the show or a party would sit down and he would go through all the contact sheets and when we were finished, we'd have to project the color, and he'd say yay-nay. We had no signed contract, this was just a handshake. That's what we did every single day."

**Bob Dylan and Patti Smith at a party in Greenwich Village, NY, fall 1975

"[Bob] approved some, others he didn't, he'd kill them or save them, but they were definitely out. As the tour started, it got great interest, I was getting calls from People, Time, Rolling Stone, and I told Bob I was getting all these inquiries. He said, I figured that would happen. You pick what you want for each of the magazines, run them by me, and we'll give them each something exclusive. And that was a big breakthrough for me in magazines, because it was an exclusive with Bob Dylan and it opened a lot of doors."**

Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol at the Factory, October 1977

"That was at the Factory. I was doing a cover story and an essay on Mick for one of the British publications. He lived in New York in a beautiful townhouse on the west side. We started there and Mick is an avid workout person, he works out every day. His trainer was there, we did a whole series of pictures of him working out, running in Riverside Park, and he said, 'Let's walk through the city.' We went all over the place. Every time I saw something I thought might be a good photo, we stopped and it was great. He's great, very cooperative. He said, "Hey! Wanna go to Warhol's?" And we went down to the Factory, Andy was there, and they were kidding around with the camera, and we took some photographs."

"Bob wanted to go out and visit Hurricane because he was opposed to the conviction of Hurricane in jail. So he went out and did a free concert for the people who were in prison there. The last night in Madison Square Garden, Muhammad Ali came backstage with Bob and thanked him for trying to get Hurricane Carter's conviction overturned. When we were onstage, unbeknownst to Bob, there was a phone call. Muhammad Ali went up to the mic and said, 'Bob, we have someone on the phone who wants to talk to you.' It was Hurricane Carter. The whole audience went crazy."

Rod Stewart playing on the beach in Hollywood, Florida, April 1972

Time sent me to Florida to spend a couple days with him. We did the show and I said to him, "You know, you're here for another couple of days, what are you going to do?" He said, hang out at the beach, play a little soccer. So I went down, took pictures of him hitting the ball and everything and he did another show that night and we had to leave right after the show and went back to the Holiday Inn. As we were leaving, he and the Faces stole the wooden Indian outside of the Holiday Inn and took it on the tour bus!"

Meat Loaf with friend in chopped-meat-filled tub, November 1978

People magazine used to nominate the 25 Most Intriguing Personalities of the Year, and one of them was Meat, and they like to do something kinda fun. I came up with this idea, a two-part idea, one was to get this antique bathtub and fill it with 400 pounds of chopped meat, put Meat in it, and have dinner being served in front of him. I talked to Meat and he said, 'That's a wild idea! I love it! What's the second idea?' I said, there's a place in New York called Manganero's and they have these six-foot heros and I thought we'd get one of those as well for a backup shot and fill it with chopped meat. We went down to the meat market the day of the shoot and bought 400 pounds of chopped meat. He was supposed to come to my studio at six or seven o'clock so the meat could thaw, and he didn't show up until 2 a.m. I had blood all over my studio. He came in at 2 o'clock in the morning with his lady friend, looked at the chopped meat and said, I'm not getting in there. I said, 'Meat, the magazine loves the idea. We've got all this chopped meat.' He said, 'No, we'll put my girlfriend in there instead and I'll sit at the tub with the plate setting.' It was 2 a.m. and I knew he wasn't going to change his mind, so we put his girlfriend in and did the photo with him and the Manganero hero and everybody was happy. That photo in the tub was never published until now."

Backstage with Kiss and their families (the Frehleys, the Stanleys, the Criscuolas, and the Witzes) for a New York Times Magazine cover story, Madison Square Garden, February 1977

"That was Michael O'Keefe again; the New York Times Sunday Magazine wanted me to do a cover shoot of Kiss and photograph whatever else is going on. I went over to the garden in the afternoon to do the sound check and set up the studio in one of the dressing rooms. On my way to the sound check, I slipped and fell and was out cold. I had a mild concussion. They hadn't covered all the ice from the hockey game the night before, it was a section that wasn't covered and I couldn't see it. But anyway, I did the sound check and then we went backstage two or three hours later and did the cover for the New York Times Sunday Magazine. And I think it was Gene or one of those guys who asked for a family picture, because the entire family was going to be there. So we photographed the family. The next day, I went to the doctors, had an MRI, it was a slight concussion, but I had broken my coccyx bone. I was in a lot of pain. I asked the doctor what to do, and he said they could remove the operation or you could sit on a donut for the next 10 weeks. He said, 'It's your call!' Well, I've never had surgery, so I'll take the donut with me wherever I go. It was painful, but it healed itself."

"Alice was playing ping pong with Santa Claus and of course, brought out the snake, we got such funny pictures. I wanna jump ahead for a minute to 2001, I'm in Paris, doing still photography for Johnathan Demme's film, The Truth about Charlie with Mark Wahlberg. It's the third day on the set and Mark comes in with his assistant, introduce themselves, and then Mark goes into makeup and hair, and his assistant Eric Weinstein said, 'You did a lot of music, didn't you? Did you ever shoot Alice Cooper?' He said, 'I was there. I was Alice's assistant.' I called my office and had them send me the contact sheets and lo and behold, there's a much thinner Eric Weinstein. I had my office send them to Paris and we've been friends ever since."

"In that period of time, I took 13,750 photographs. Every night, Bob and I after the show or a party would sit down and he would go through all the contact sheets and when we were finished, we'd have to project the color, and he'd say yay-nay. We had no signed contract, this was just a handshake. That's what we did every single day."